If people are reading this thread and want to read this argument in more detail: the (excellent) book ‘The Secret of our Success’ by Joseph Henrich (astral codex 10 review/summary here https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/) makes this argument in a very compelling way. There is a lot of support for the idea that the crucial ‘rubicon’ that separates chimps from people is cultural transmission which enables the gradual evolution of strategies over periods longer than an individual lifetime rather than any ‘raw’ problem solving intelligence. In fact according to Heinrich there are many ways in which humans are actually worse than chimps in some measures of raw intelligence: chimps have better working memory and faster reactions for complex tasks in some cases, and they are better than people at finding Nash equilibria which require randomising your strategy. But humans are uniquely able to learn behaviours from demonstration and forming larger groups which enable the gradual accumulation of ‘cultural technology’, which then allowed a runway of cultural-genetic co-evolution (e.g food processing technology → smaller stomachs and bigger brains → even more culture → bigger brains even more of an advantage etc.) It’s hard to appreciate how much this kind of thing helps you think; for instance, most people can learn maths but few would have invented arabic numerals by themselves. Similarly, having a large brain by itself is actually not super useful without the cultural superstructure: most people alive today would quickly die if dropped into the ancestral environment without the support of modern culture unless they could learn from hunter-gatherers (see Henrich for many examples of this happening to European explorers!). For instance, i like to think I’m a pretty smart guy but I have no idea how to make e.g bronze or stone tools, and it’s not obvious that my physics degree would help me figure it out! Henrich also makes the case for the importance of this with some slightly chilling examples of cultures that lost their ability to make complex technology (e.g boats) when they fell below a critical population size and became isolated.
It’s interesting to consider the implications for AI: I’m not very sure about this. On the one hand LLMs clearly have superhuman ability to memorise facts, but I’m not sure if this means they can learn new tasks or information particularly easily. On the other it seems likely that LLMs are taking pretty heavy advantage of the ‘culture overhang’ of the internet! I don’t know if it really makes sense to think of their abilities here as strongly superhuman: if you magically had the compute and code to try to train gpt-n in 1950 it’s not obvious you could have got it to do very much, without the internet for it to absorb.
Haven’t read that book, added to the top of my list, thanks for the reference!
But humans are uniquely able to learn behaviours from demonstration and forming larger groups which enable the gradual accumulation of ‘cultural technology’, which then allowed a runway of cultural-genetic co-evolution (e.g food processing technology → smaller stomachs and bigger brains → even more culture → bigger brains even more of an advantage etc.)
One thing I think about a lot is: are we sure this is unique, or did something else like luck or geography somehow play an important role in one (or a handful) of groups of sapiens happening to develop some strong (or “viral”) positive-feedback cultural learning mechanisms that eventually dramatically outpaced other creatures? We know that other species can learn by demonstration, and pass down information from generation to generation, and we know that humans have big brains, but were some combination of timing / luck / climate / resources perhaps also a major factor?
If Homo sapiens are believed to have originated around 200,000 years ago, but only developed agricultural techniques around 12,000 years ago, the earliest known city 9,000 years ago, and only developed a modern-style writing system maybe 5,000 years ago, are we sure that those humans who lived for 90%+ of human “pre-history” without agriculture, large groups, and writing systems would look substantially more intelligent to us than chimpanzees? If our ancestral primates never branched off from chimps and bonobos, are we sure the earth wouldn’t now (or some time in the past or future) be populated with chimpanzee city-equivalents and something that looked remotely like our definition of technology?
It’s hard to appreciate how much this kind of thing helps you think
Strongly agree. It seems possible that a time-travelling scientist could go back to some point in time and conduct rigorous experiments that would show sapiens as not as “intelligent” as some other species at that point in time. It’s easy to forget how recently human society looked a lot closer to animal society than it does to modern human society. I’ve seen tests that estimate the human IQ level of adult chimpanzees to be maybe in the 20-25 range, but we can’t know how a prehistoric adult human would perform on the same tests. Like, if humans are so inherently smart and curious, why did it take us over 100,000 years to figure out how plants work? If someone developed an AI today that took 100,000 years to figure out how plants work, they’d be laughed at if they suggested it had “human-level” intelligence.
One of the problems with the current AI human-level intelligence debate that seems pretty fundamental is that many people, without even realising it, conflate concepts like “as intelligent as a [modern educated] human” with “as intelligent as humanity” or “as intelligent as a randomly selected Homo sapiens from history”.
Well maybe you should read the book! I think that there are a few concrete points you can disagree on.
One thing I think about a lot is: are we sure this is unique, or did something else like luck or geography
somehow play an important role in one (or a handful) of groups of sapiens happening to develop some
strong (or “viral”) positive-feedback cultural learning mechanisms that eventually dramatically outpaced
other creatures?
I’m not an expert, but I’m not so sure that this is right; I think that anatomically modern humans already had significantly better abilities to learn and transmit culture than other animals, because anatomically modern humans generally need to extensively prepare their food (cooking, grinding etc.) in a culturally transmitted way. So by the time we get to sapiens we are already pretty strongly on this trajectory.
I think there’s an element of luck: other animals do have cultural transmission (for example elephants and killer whales) but maybe aren’t anatomically suited to discover fire and agriculture. Some quirks of group size likely also play a role. It’s definitely a feedback loop though; once you are an animal with culture, then there is increased selection pressure to be better at culture, which creates more culture etc.
If Homo sapiens are believed to have originated around 200,000 years ago, but only developed agricultural techniques around 12,000 years ago, the earliest known city 9,000 years ago, and only developed a modern-style writing system maybe 5,000 years ago, are we sure that those humans who lived for 90%+ of human “pre-history” without agriculture, large groups, and writing systems would look substantially more intelligent to us than chimpanzees?
I’m gonna go with absolutely yes, see my above comment about anatomically modern humans and food prep. I think you are severely under-estimating the sophistication of hunter-gatherer technology and culture!
The degree to which ‘objective’ measures of intelligence like IQ are culturally specific is an interesting question.
If people are reading this thread and want to read this argument in more detail: the (excellent) book ‘The Secret of our Success’ by Joseph Henrich (astral codex 10 review/summary here https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/) makes this argument in a very compelling way. There is a lot of support for the idea that the crucial ‘rubicon’ that separates chimps from people is cultural transmission which enables the gradual evolution of strategies over periods longer than an individual lifetime rather than any ‘raw’ problem solving intelligence. In fact according to Heinrich there are many ways in which humans are actually worse than chimps in some measures of raw intelligence: chimps have better working memory and faster reactions for complex tasks in some cases, and they are better than people at finding Nash equilibria which require randomising your strategy. But humans are uniquely able to learn behaviours from demonstration and forming larger groups which enable the gradual accumulation of ‘cultural technology’, which then allowed a runway of cultural-genetic co-evolution (e.g food processing technology → smaller stomachs and bigger brains → even more culture → bigger brains even more of an advantage etc.) It’s hard to appreciate how much this kind of thing helps you think; for instance, most people can learn maths but few would have invented arabic numerals by themselves. Similarly, having a large brain by itself is actually not super useful without the cultural superstructure: most people alive today would quickly die if dropped into the ancestral environment without the support of modern culture unless they could learn from hunter-gatherers (see Henrich for many examples of this happening to European explorers!). For instance, i like to think I’m a pretty smart guy but I have no idea how to make e.g bronze or stone tools, and it’s not obvious that my physics degree would help me figure it out! Henrich also makes the case for the importance of this with some slightly chilling examples of cultures that lost their ability to make complex technology (e.g boats) when they fell below a critical population size and became isolated.
It’s interesting to consider the implications for AI: I’m not very sure about this. On the one hand LLMs clearly have superhuman ability to memorise facts, but I’m not sure if this means they can learn new tasks or information particularly easily. On the other it seems likely that LLMs are taking pretty heavy advantage of the ‘culture overhang’ of the internet! I don’t know if it really makes sense to think of their abilities here as strongly superhuman: if you magically had the compute and code to try to train gpt-n in 1950 it’s not obvious you could have got it to do very much, without the internet for it to absorb.
Haven’t read that book, added to the top of my list, thanks for the reference!
One thing I think about a lot is: are we sure this is unique, or did something else like luck or geography somehow play an important role in one (or a handful) of groups of sapiens happening to develop some strong (or “viral”) positive-feedback cultural learning mechanisms that eventually dramatically outpaced other creatures? We know that other species can learn by demonstration, and pass down information from generation to generation, and we know that humans have big brains, but were some combination of timing / luck / climate / resources perhaps also a major factor?
If Homo sapiens are believed to have originated around 200,000 years ago, but only developed agricultural techniques around 12,000 years ago, the earliest known city 9,000 years ago, and only developed a modern-style writing system maybe 5,000 years ago, are we sure that those humans who lived for 90%+ of human “pre-history” without agriculture, large groups, and writing systems would look substantially more intelligent to us than chimpanzees? If our ancestral primates never branched off from chimps and bonobos, are we sure the earth wouldn’t now (or some time in the past or future) be populated with chimpanzee city-equivalents and something that looked remotely like our definition of technology?
Strongly agree. It seems possible that a time-travelling scientist could go back to some point in time and conduct rigorous experiments that would show sapiens as not as “intelligent” as some other species at that point in time. It’s easy to forget how recently human society looked a lot closer to animal society than it does to modern human society. I’ve seen tests that estimate the human IQ level of adult chimpanzees to be maybe in the 20-25 range, but we can’t know how a prehistoric adult human would perform on the same tests. Like, if humans are so inherently smart and curious, why did it take us over 100,000 years to figure out how plants work? If someone developed an AI today that took 100,000 years to figure out how plants work, they’d be laughed at if they suggested it had “human-level” intelligence.
One of the problems with the current AI human-level intelligence debate that seems pretty fundamental is that many people, without even realising it, conflate concepts like “as intelligent as a [modern educated] human” with “as intelligent as humanity” or “as intelligent as a randomly selected Homo sapiens from history”.
Well maybe you should read the book! I think that there are a few concrete points you can disagree on.
I’m not an expert, but I’m not so sure that this is right; I think that anatomically modern humans already had significantly better abilities to learn and transmit culture than other animals, because anatomically modern humans generally need to extensively prepare their food (cooking, grinding etc.) in a culturally transmitted way. So by the time we get to sapiens we are already pretty strongly on this trajectory.
I think there’s an element of luck: other animals do have cultural transmission (for example elephants and killer whales) but maybe aren’t anatomically suited to discover fire and agriculture. Some quirks of group size likely also play a role. It’s definitely a feedback loop though; once you are an animal with culture, then there is increased selection pressure to be better at culture, which creates more culture etc.
I’m gonna go with absolutely yes, see my above comment about anatomically modern humans and food prep. I think you are severely under-estimating the sophistication of hunter-gatherer technology and culture!
The degree to which ‘objective’ measures of intelligence like IQ are culturally specific is an interesting question.